Icon and task-bar tools for Windows

A few things bug me about the Windows user interface and as I currently have no inclination to head over to Vista I thought it was about time I dug around and found some tools to address the job.

Icons blown away

Windows will often make a mess of your desktop by moving the icons around normally because the resolution switched.

I can understand this happening if I switch resolution but sometimes even an Alt-Tab from a game will be enough to open the Window and let your icons scatter to the wind.

WinTidy comes to the rescue and although it comes with source the license is a little confusing as is the technique it uses to obtain the icon positions by sending messages to the ListView control inside the explorer.exe process.

Still, it works and even lets you choose icon positions per resolution if you so wish.

Taskbar reordering

Mac OS X lets you reorder the dock, Firefox and IE7 let you reorder tabs but Windows Explorer doesn’t want to know – it’ll just about give you the time of day.

TaskbarShuffle comes to the rescue and lets you just pick up those task-bar buttons and reorder them until your heart is content.

[)amien